All There Is with Anderson Cooper - Tig Notaro: Finding What Matters

Episode Date: November 19, 2025

Comedian Tig Notaro recently witnessed the death of her friend, poet Andrea Gibson, after a years-long battle with cancer. Being by Andrea's bedside was a profound experience for Tig and she talks about its impact on her in this moving and at times funny conversation. Join the community to share your story and watch Anderson's weekly streaming show All There Is Live at cnn.com/allthereis. Host: Anderson Cooper Showrunner: Haley Thomas Producers: Chuck Hadad, Grace Walker, Emily Williams Associate Producer: Kyra Dahring Video Editor: Eric Zembrzuski Technical Director: Dan Dzula Bookers: Kerry Rubin and Kari Pricher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Why did no one tell us that to die is to be reincarnated in those we love while they're still alive? Poet Andrea Gibson, who died this summer, wrote those words. Tignitaro was there when Andrea Gibson died, and we'll talk to her about what she witnessed and how it's made TIG rethink her own life. That's coming up on this episode of All There Is. This past week, I interviewed two people who also witnessed. the deaths of their loved ones. Susan Heim's son, Charlie, died at 17. He died in her arms this summer around the same time Andrea Gibson died. Susan had cared for Charlie his whole life. He had Down syndrome and cerebral palsy. Joe Sims cared for his son Jacob for 33 years. He also

had special needs. Jacob died six years ago, and I want to play you some of what Joe said on All There Is Live, the Companion Show to this podcast. One of the things that Jacob loved to do was go on road trips. He loved nature. He loved being outside. He loved, I love putting his feet in a creek and let him feel the cool water. And I even took him nearby one of the waterfalls, and he felt the mist of the water. I think that was his best time when he was doing that.

Even though he lived to only 33, he had a full life. And then it ends. And you don't know what you're supposed to do. you lose yourself because your whole identity is wrapped around his every moment and you hit the wall and then he passed away on a Tuesday and my wife and I were lost on Wednesday we wandered around for months trying to figure out our life without him

there's some days that I still feel the fog and then there's other days I can see out of the fog and I think that's what my son would want I don't want to stop grieving though honestly Anderson I don't want to stop grieving I think the grieving is is healthy it keeps me in touch with him I talk to him every day still

you feel him in your grief oh big time sure yeah just like you do with your grief and it's weird to say this but I'm happy that I'm sad at times I'm happy I still have that because you're feeling that's right it's not supposed to go away it just isn't you're supposed to be able to live with it

and still have a good life and a happy life and still have grief there's you can live with both can you say jacob's full name so that everybody listening hears it it's jacob david sims born in phoenix arizona and 1986 january 17 his birthday's coming up maybe everybody at home who's watching could repeat the name, just so that everybody tonight is speaking his name out there into the universe. Jacob, David, Sims. I appreciate that. Thank you.

In a moment, my conversation with Tignitaro. My guest today is comedian, cancer survivor Tignitaro. I spoke to TIG just days after she'd attended a memorial in celebration of life for her longtime friend, the spoken word poet Andrea Gibson. Andrea died July 14th. They were 49 years old. Andrea, who used the pronouns they and them, was diagnosed four years ago with stage four ovarian cancer. When Andrea died, TIG was there in the home that Andrea shared with their wife, Megan Fally. TIG is also a producer on an incredibly moving documentary that follows Andrea and Megan through Andrea's illness. The film is called Come See Me in the Good Light, and you can watch it streaming on

Apple TV right now. I played part of the film with Tig when she sat down, and I want you to hear Andrea's words. I want you to meet Andrea Gibson. I feel like I lived so much longer in these last years than I did all the years before. It was just this, wow. Wow, I got this life. And I know I'm not gonna die today, like I feel pretty certain. And so wow, like wow, I get tomorrow too. So what happens next? I don't know.

I want to live in the mystery, you know. I want my very last second to be like, damn, I wish I had a million more of these. Do you feel like that is what Andrea's seconds were like? No doubt. Yeah. and man hearing Andrea's voice it's tough

I think it's still so recent too it's very recent but hearing Andrea just now was yeah I just can't stand

that Andrea is gone Today is actually Andrea's birthday. Andrea Gibson turned 50 years old today. Yeah, almost made it. How did you meet Andrew? When I left Texas, as a teenager, I dropped out of high school and moved to Colorado, and I met Andrea backstage at this theater called Old Bain. Andrew was already doing spoken word poetry.

Yeah. Andrea looked like a rock star tattoos just to find out Andrea was a poet it was not my world and I was in comedy at the time but a poet I was like okay I'm listening and then Andrea went on stage and leveled the place I was stunned I didn't know that was poetry I didn't know poetry could look like that but that's That's how Andrea's shows were. It was just like so intense, so you could be crying. And then Andrea was one of the funniest, most ridiculous people. And that's where I fully connected. Meg said at one point that she didn't want to grieve while Andrea was alive. She was intentionally not going down that road.

Do you feel like you have already been grieving, Andrea? before Andrea died? Yes. Yes, for sure. It was also very confusing. I feel like I'm very grounded. And then I find myself in these moments of life where I'm like, maybe Andrea is lying about having cancer.

You know, like a, you know, I hear some weird Netflix documentary. Yeah, you hear stories about people lying. And I was like, man, that would be the greatest ending to this story is just to find out my friend has deep trauma and lied about this. And let's dig in and figure that out. It didn't feel possible for Andrea to not be alive in this physical world. Does it feel different than you expected it to me? I think it's definitely different. I didn't expect to feel Andrea so much.

Andrew's presence still. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I've lost my mother, my father, my stepfather, my cousin. I've lost many friends and colleagues. I have to say it's really the first time I've experienced a death in the way that I have where I really feel Andrea. And I don't know what that is. But the grief I feel, you know how tricky it is.

You go about your day and you're doing all right. And then all of a sudden a truck parks itself on your chest and you can't do anything. It's so confusing that Andrea has gone. Like I was just at their memorial in Denver a couple of nights ago. And it really just felt like we were at a party for Andrea. I mean, it was devastating. and poets from every corner of the globe came in to read Andrea's poetry

and it was a, this is going to sound crazy, a greatest hits night. I mean, God, they're hits. It's hit poetry. What am I saying? But it's true. It was just so beautiful.

As you said, you've experienced grief before your mom died. And then very shortly after that, you got cancer. Yes, yes. It was a four month, I think, period. of time, that I had pneumonia, then I contracted this intestinal disease called C. diff. And I had invasive cancer. My mother tripped, hit her head and died, and my girlfriend and I split up. So that was an overload of grief, grief about my body after surgeries. Did I read correctly that you had to make the decision of remember?

moving life support? From my mother? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And with my stepfather. I describe it to people like you're watching your loved one drown and you can't throw them any sort of safety net.

You just have to let them drown as you hold their hand. And same with Andrea, being dehydrated and they desperately want any sort of hydration. And then after a certain point, you just have to let go. And it's every deathbed that I've been, or end of life, it's so different. It's so different. And Andreas was at home, and really one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. Beautiful. In what way? That's not to say it wasn't utterly devastating and that feeling of unfairness, but there were just a lot of different people from different times in Andrea's life that traveled actual long distances, planes, trains, automobiles, and emotional journeys that people were on. And I remember after my diagnosis, that feeling, when you know how precious something is, it's that sweet spot. But it oftentimes and sadly comes in the very last moment, a breakup or somebody's dying.

You can see everything so clearly. Every grudge goes completely away. And everybody really holding each other through it for days. literally holding each other no matter how well you did or didn't know the person next to you. One of the things was, Andrea was highly medicated because when people are in that, in the final moments, there's discomfort and pain. Andrews said something. One of the things was I fucking loved my life.

Yeah, I fucking loved my life. And we all just looked at each other. other. It was a gift. It was such a gift to be able to hear Andrea say that. And to be in the room when that happened was extraordinary. You called it a transformative experience being there. Yeah. I don't even know to explain what I was just a part of and what I just witnessed. It really, really resonated on a very deep level of, I don't want to get caught up. anything that's not real, and that was real. That was really real, what I witnessed.

The love, the humanity was on overdrive. It's beautiful. It was really beautiful, really beautiful. I mean, one can't ask for any other way to die, really. That's what I want. More of my conversation with Tig Nataro in just a moment. If you want to listen or watch past episodes of this podcast, you can do that at our community page, cnn.com forward slash All There Is. That's where you can also watch our new weekly companion show called All There Is Live. It's Thursday nights at 9.15 p.m. Eastern. We'll be right back with more from TIG. We're back with TIG Natara. Do you feel like you have gone back to your regular life? Or do you still feel that transformative power? It's rippling on a very deep level that's making me feel tethered to really what matters.

And I don't know how long that, you know, I'm human and you go in and out of that, or I do. But I feel very tethered to, you know, what matters and who matters. And it's really making me rethink a lot of things in my life. You don't want to go back to just normal life. I think I want a new normal, not holding on to anything that's not real. I was lucky enough to be in Colorado for the couple of weeks after Andrea passed, and I couldn't sleep well, and I was getting up at 4 in the morning, and I didn't know what to do with myself or what to do with this energy,

and I was taking 6 a.m. walks and watching the sun. come up and told my wife Stephanie, I was like, I have so much energy that I don't know where to put it that I feel like I just want to walk back to Andrea's house. And she was like, what are you talking you can't? It's a four-hour drive. And I was like, I'm up for it. She's like, okay, where are you going to sleep? I was like, I don't care. I'll sleep on the side of the road. I felt like I don't need any food or any water. I just have this crazy energy in me where I just, I felt so connected to that room where Andrea was and where Andrea's loved ones and closest people and exes and family. It was this otherworldly experience and it's a sweet spot that would be incredible to be able to live in, but it's sadly not realistic.

I turned to Stephanie at one point and said, and can you believe at some point I'm going to have to exit the 101 onto Melrose and just head back into Hollywood? Like, I could not comprehend such a thing. That juxtaposition is so, it's interesting, I lived briefly in Los Angeles in my early 20s when I was first starting out as a reporter

and I was just going to war zones and conflict zones. And I would be in these incredible, extraordinary places where horrific things were happening and it was life and death and the molecules of the air were charged with human emotion and I mean it was just impossible to describe and then to return to Los Angeles and being a supermarket and there's like cool mist on the vegetables and go work out at crunch yeah I mean all I wanted to do was leave and go back yeah even though when I was there I was depressed and horrified by what I what I was seeing Very similar. I was devastated, devastated. But I was also very aware that this was the greatest in humanity, what was going on in Andrew's.

Yeah, yeah. It was. I think it's one of the reasons I started this podcast is because just the weirdness that this is stuff people don't talk about. And yet it is something that everybody may experience at some point in their life if they're lucky to be there when their loved one is leaving. Well, what I think I really realized through this experience is that death really is coming for us all. I don't know if it's right to say make friends with that idea of dying, but it really should be more in conversation. I don't want my death to sneak up on my kids, although I've had a lot of health issues, so I don't know. know if it's going to sneak up on anyone. But I really have such a new, not that I'm going to abandon comedy and become a death dula, but. Oh my God. Don't get me starting a death dula.

I mean, I hear from so many of them. It's an extraordinary thing. It is extraordinary. And I get it. I get it. I seriously consider giving up my job. Anderson and Tiggs death dula. I would do it. I'll do it if you do it. Sir, let's do it. It is so, I mean, hospice nurses, death doulas. Well, I'm so pale and why people would think, like, they're already in the afterlife. When I walk in, you'd get them laughing, and then I would walk in and freak everybody out. Yes. Oh, my God.

I think people would freak out if we were who showed up in their final moments of life. Ding-dong. T&A are here. TNA. TN.A. Yeah. Tegan. Oh, right.

Yeah, Tiganderson. Yes, okay. No, I wasn't, I mean, it was a, I was making a reference to it, but I was. out, right? No, I think that'll stay in. We need to get business cards to me. But no, this experience with Andrea really made me understand the importance of really talking about death rather than live my life, fearing death and trying to kick it away at every

possible move I'm making to just really incorporate it into my thoughts and the way I go about things because it's it's coming. Andrea wrote a poem a letter from the afterlife. I just want to play part of it. My love, I was so wrong. Dying is the opposite of leaving. When I left my body, I did not go away. That portal of light was not a portal to elsewhere, but a portal to here. I am more here than I ever was before. I am more with you than I ever could have imagined. So close you look past me when wondering where I am, it's okay. I know that to be human is to be far-sighted.

But feel me now, walking the chambers of your heart, pressing my palms to the soft walls of your living. Why did no one tell us that to die is to be reincarnated in those we love while they are still alive? ask me the altitude of heaven and I will answer how tall are you it's pretty incredible Andrews saying why did no one tell why did no one tell us that to die is to be reincarnated in those we love while they are still alive ask me the altitude of heaven I'll answer how tall are you I love that yeah

One of my favorite things Andrea ever said was, what kind of poet would I be if I could only make things beautiful on the page? And, yeah, Andrea wrote that, and Andrea spoke those words to Meg's face. I also love the line of, like, I'm so close that you look past me. You don't even know that I'm there. I feel that so much. And the dying is the opposite of leaving. when I left my body, I did not go away.

That portal of light was not a portal to elsewhere, but a portal to hear. That idea to me is so moving. I had never really grieved until a couple of years ago. I never really allowed myself to. And I do think that if you allow yourself to feel grief, you can feel the person alive inside you. Maybe it's like I'm experiencing what you experienced two years ago

of opening yourself up to something like that. Grief on whatever level. By the way, I don't know why. I'm the one who's always crying on this friggin' podcast of mine. I don't know why it's supposed to be the guests who are crying. It's not supposed to be like a host. It's very pathetic. Jesus.

Pull yourself together, Anderson. I was imagining, are you thinking like, God, this guy's a wreck? No, I was thinking. This is disconcerting. We told me this guy was such an emotional basket guess. Why didn't anyone mention what a loose canon this man was? No, I think it's incredible. And I think it's that space that I'm truly sitting here, and I've already said to you, I adore you.

And I love your work. And I felt like I knew you and I don't. But I am sitting here going, God, I would love to talk more with you. I would love to know more. I like I feel very much in this space. Yeah. It's okay if you want to ask me questions, too. Don't worry.

I'm egotistical enough that I will answer. But I do want to please something else that Andrew. Maria wrote and spoke in a letter from the afterlife. My love, I want to sing it through the rafters of your bones dying is the opposite of leaving. I want to echo it through the corridor of your temples. I am more with you than I ever was before. Do you understand? It was me who beckoned the stranger who caught you in her arms when you forgot not to order for two at the coffee shop.

It was me who was up all night, gathering sunflowers into your chest the last day you feared you would never again wake up feeling light-hearted. I know it's hard to believe, but I promise it's the truth. I promise one day you will say it too. I can't believe I ever thought I could lose you. I really hope that's true. Yeah. The dying is the opposite of leaving me. Do you believe that?

I think I'm like really trying to understand and make sense of my feelings because I haven't been somebody that has felt that. Really? You don't strike me as the kind of person who pushed down your feelings. How dare you? Because I see myself in you and so I know it when I see it. Okay, yeah. My wife is very into... Feeling?

Well, no, I'm very... I'm actually very sensitive, but as far as my belief in what's going on after this life, I haven't really bought into. I'm kind of buying in with Andrea. Death inevitably brings up coulda shoulda wooders. And with Andrea, I had this dream for years that I would go on tour with Andrea. And for years, I'd be like, ah, I'll do it later. I don't know if you experienced that. Yeah, I mean, of course.

Shoulda could have, what is? Absolutely. They're the toughest after a death. I mean, I wish I'd interviewed Andrea. Two years ago, about what they were going through. Well, and that's what's so incredible to see, like, how exciting that the world is finding out about Andrea Gibson. There's no world that I thought when I met that scrappy little rock star poet backstage at Old Main in Boulder that they would become who they became. Stephanie was saying, Andrea Gibson is now going to be one of very few poets people know by name.

That is wild. What poet becomes famous, you know? Then publishes eight books, and Anderson Cooper is sitting here saying, I wish I had interviewed Andrea Gibson. It's really remarkable. I asked a question to everybody in the podcast. Is there something you've learned in your grief that would help others? I think about those kind of hard moments.

that you don't want to face that seem impossible at the time. I have fear initially in a lot of those hard moments. Like, how am I going to do this? When I was a kid in junior high school, I hung out with this guy. John, he was a rocker and had the most incredible vinyl collection. We'd hang out in his bedroom and listen to records. And one day he was like, oh, dude, my mom just got home. I'm not supposed to have anyone over.

Can you jump out of my window? And I was like, what? And I was like on the ledge of his second floor window. And I'm like, I can't let John get in trouble. So I just jumped. And that moment that I just had to force myself to jump and just do it, I've taken with me my whole life because even though, And look, I don't recommend jumping, especially when you're like a knobby-need seventh grader onto cement.

But that moment that I just, I had to mind over matter, just go, just jump. And when I have to do something hard, I just, I go off and I do it. And I think that the lesson goes back to your question of, what have I learned from my grief? and it is to not avoid it. And for a long time, I've avoided grief and wasn't quite ready for it. And I feel it has opened me as a person tremendously to explore it and be also available to others in their grief.

Wait a minute. Are you going to start a grief podcast? Because I'm the only one who has repressed my grief. grief in my entire life who gets to have a podcast about it. Well, if you're looking for a co-host. You're just going to be funny and everything. Damn it. God, it's the only thing I had going.

And I'm taking this from you too. Yeah. There can only be one person who's repressed their grief here. Only one gay grief repressed. With unprocessed or whatever you want to call it. I hate that word. Processes to Mississippi. That's right.

with two sons. Yeah, two sons. Is there anything else you want to say? No. No. I just... You regret walking into this? What? Did your bookers tell you what this was right? Thank you so much.

Thank you so much. I really appreciate you having me. I know the holidays can be tough, and I hope you know that you're not alone. If you have something that helps you get through these holidays, leave us a video message on our Instagram at All There Is or at our voicemail box, 404, 827, 1805. All There Is is going to be back with a new episode on December 2nd with musician Nick Cave,

who's experienced the death of two sons, Arthur and Jethro. What I came to understand is that we are all sort of creatures of loss, that we are all part of the world and that we are all suffering in our own ways. The world is suffering from loss. It is the thing that holds us together. There is an ocean of grief out there. Yeah, and I think that that's the sort of connective tissue

that holds us all together. It's the thing that we can look, I can look at you, you can look at me, and we understand that within our lives, whatever they may be, there is this sort of thread of loss that runs through. Wherever you are in your grief, I'm glad you're here. I'm glad we're together.

You're not alone. Thanks for listening to All There Is with Anderson Cooper. Follow and listen to All There Is on Amazon Music or just ask Alexa. Play the podcast All There Is on Amazon Music. Hey friends, this is Audie Cornish, host of CNN this morning and the assignment. And guess what? Every story you care about. angle you want unpacked is now streaming on CNN. So subscribe to CNN at CNN.com slash

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